The Moorchild (12 page)

“Well enough for
you
to say ‘don’t heed ’em,’ ” she pointed out. “I’m feared not to, lest they do me a mischief.”

“What mischief, then?”

“Any they can! That Herewic—Cattila’s big lad—he pushed me into the woods pond t’other day. Or would’ve, hadn’t I skipped out of the way right lively. It’s deep, that pond.” She shivered, not quite able to seem casual. It had been a shock, a fright—and led to a scary discovery. Nobody had tried to save her, not one. They had stood and watched. She had saved herself.

“You can’t swim?” Tam asked her.

“I dunno.” She forced the quaver out of her voice. “Leastways, I never tried, and I didn’t fancy learning that way! I’d’a drowned, I think.”

“How’d you get out, then?”

“Never rightly went in. Just dipped my skirts, like. There was a branch hanging over . . . ” Saaski let the rest trail into an evasive shrug.

It hadn’t really been close enough to grab, that branch. She’d had to leap for it—fly, like. It had almost felt like flying. And her swift scramble into the higher branches had felt like running—effortless, sure, unhesitating, feet and hands working without conscious thought. Only when she sat perched in a safe crotch, heart pounding, peering down at the gaping, upturned faces of Robin and Bretla and Bran and Jankin and Morgan and Eluna and the rest, did she realize she’d just shown herself a good deal odder than before. She hadn’t climbed a tree that way in years with anybody watching. She’d been careful not to.

Too late now to pretend she couldn’t do it—that she was just like them. She wasn’t. She couldn’t understand the things they did. She wasn’t like anybody she knew—even Tam.

“Don’t heed ’em,” Tam said again, but he was watching her face and he sounded angry. “Howsomever, don’t turn your back on ’em, either! Stupid, murtherin’ clodpoles. Here! Sit down—I’ll show you a new trick I’ve been workin’ at.”

He pushed her gently to a seat and produced from his leathern pouch five smooth creek stones the size of
walnuts—a black one, a white, a brown, and two he had colored, one with red earth, and the other with a golden, transparent yellow he must have begged when somebody was washing a beehive to make mead. They were pretty, there in his cupped hands like some kind of strange bird’s eggs, and Saaski could not help smiling.

“That’s better!” Tam said. “Now watch—see if you can say which color’ll come up next!”

He began to juggle—slowly, so she could follow the movements, tossing the stones in a lazy oval in the air, catching them again in reverse order. It was easy—she was soon naming their colors shrilly as they came thunking back into his hand. But then the lazy oval gradually speeded into a whirl, and once he seemed to have found three white stones somewhere in the air. By the time he caught them all in the pouch, and buckled its flap, Saaski was shrieking with delight.

Tam gave a pleased grin, swaggered a bit, and they thought no more—that day—of the village children. But it was hard for Saaski to forget them for long, for at the tasks they shared she could not avoid them—nor they, her. Until she could escape to the moor, the daily taunts and snubs and pinpricks of malice ever repeated
freaky-odd.

Tam got angrier about it than she did. “Don’t you hate ’em for treating you like that?” he demanded one day when she’d appeared with a skinned and bloody forearm—souvenir of a push she hadn’t seen coming, which had thrust her painfully against the pasture’s stone wall.

She was pressing a bit of web over the place, and only shrugged. She didn’t really understand about hate. She
often felt scowly, sometimes sore and lonely, mostly bored to screaming with their tireless, stupid pestering. But hate? “What’s it feel like, hate?” she asked him after a moment. It was all right to ask Tam things like that; he never gaped at her for not knowing.

But this time he didn’t seem to know how to answer. “Well . . . mean, like. You want to hurt somebody a-purpose, or plan out somethin’ wicked that’ll make ’em sorry. Can’t rightly explain it, I guess.” He hesitated, then his face cleared. “Here, I’ve got it. It’s all the way t’other end of your feelings from love. Clean upside-down from love.”

Saaski studied him a minute. Hate sounded a lot like the way
they
acted, not any way she felt. As for love—was it like wanting to do something for Anwara because of the bagpipes? Likely she didn’t understand about love, either. It was just one of the ways she was different from everybody else.

Tam alone never made her feel it; didn’t even seem to care. “What’s the good being just like everybody else?” he’d say. “Here—y’know what Divil did last night?” and he’d be off on a tale of the black goat’s ways that made them both forget hers.

But today he was inclined to brood, to take her bloodied arm more seriously than she did. “A body’d think their mums and da’s would teach ’em better,” he grumbled. “I s’pose they never pull these pranks where the grown-ups can see, though.”

“Sometimes they do,” Saaski admitted, thinking of the hair pulling Morgan and Eluna got up to, screaming with
fake laughter and saying Saaski’s hair was only a sheep’s wool glued on her head. Ebba only watched sidewise with an odd, twitching little smile, till Saaski herself fought free of them, then she told her twins mildly not to tease, and Saaski—crossly—to mend her ways or Yanno would hear how she kicked and pinched. “I think the mums and da’s don’t mind,” Saaski told Tam bluntly.

“Well, I mind,” Tam growled, but there was nothing he could do about it, either.

The goats had found a patch of thornbush, and were happily stretching their necks and even standing on hind legs to reach the tenderest twigs. It seemed a good time to rest a bit, and look out over the wild, high world. Tam dropped down on a sun-warmed stone, leaned his stick against it, fished out his long reed pipe and began to play a mellow, fluttering little tune. Saaski sat down near him. She had not brought her bagpipes, having fled straight from the pasture and her collision with the wall. But she was content to listen and let the music mend the jagged edges of the morning.

In truth, the morning was half gone, as she saw by a squinting glance at the sun. She would be late with the firewood, with the churning, with the loads of bracken needed to underlie the stacks of new-cut hay and keep them dry and mouse free. Late with everything, and she was sure to get scoldings from Anwara and roarings from Yanno, who was always grouchy when he had to quit smithing to go haying—and no chance to slip away to Old Bess and the books. Saaski sighed, and felt the day settle heavily upon
her. Go now, to her tasks—and the children—or stay, and be late and scolded?

It was no decision, really. She would stay.

“You a-hungered?” Tam asked, putting his flute away. “I’ve some cheese in me pouch—and yon’s a moorberry bush. I’ll pick us some in me cap.”

Saaski sprang up to help; when the cap was full of berries she produced her own midday bite—two of Anwara’s flat loaves—from her apron pocket, and swapped Tam one for a chunk of his tough yellow cheese. They returned to their stones and sat companionably eating, Tam telling one of his tales about the King’s Town, which she never knew whether to believe or not. She was half listening, half watching one of the scampering small figures—or shadows or whatever they were—that she glimpsed occasionally on the flickering paths. This one was not following a path, but lurking just yonder behind the moorberry bush; she saw a flash of red among the leaves. Next instant a small red-capped figure darted swift as a lizard up onto the rock beside Tam. And there it sat, in plain sight, scarce an arm’s length away.

Not quite in plain sight. It was like looking into clear water. The far edge of the rock and the clump of broom behind were both waveringly visible through its shape. But she could see the shape, too. And it was no shadow, no mere fancy.

It was a little man.

He was no taller than the miller’s little Octo, who was only six—but he had a straggly beard, and grizzled pale hair
showed through a hole in his scarlet cap. The longer she stared, the plainer she saw him, but he seemed not to know it. He was watching Tam—and whenever Tam set his cheese down on the rock to eat berries or break a chunk off his loaf, the little man’s hand flashed out—long fingered and deft, it was—and snatched up the cheese and took a mouthful before setting it back. Soon Tam would reach for the cheese and set the loaf down instead. Then the little man would grab the loaf.

Tam was still telling his story, plainly unaware of how fast his lunch was vanishing. Saaski could not help smothering a giggle as she waited for him to notice.

At last he did, breaking off his tale as he blinked down at the mere scrap of cheese he was holding. “Here! Did I eat all that already? Where’s the rest of my bread?”

“It’s the little man,” she told him, gasping with mingled laughter and bewilderment. “Why d’you let him nobble it?”

Tam looked quickly where she pointed, looked all around, then back at her, flushing a little. “D’ye take me for a fool, then? Nobody there.”

The laughter died out of her. Defensive, half-frightened, she pointed again. “That little man—he took a bite—every time you put a thing down. Made a good meal, he did.” She stared at the little man, who was still there, but staring wide-eyed at her, now. “Can’t you see him? Right beside you!”

Tam looked hard at the spot and made a sudden swooping grab, but missed by a hand’s length. The little man was gone in a flash, diving for the moorberry bush, stopping to peer back at Saaski with one astounded, terrified
glare, then scuttling out of sight among the leaves. In a moment a meadowlark shot out of the bush and flew away over the moor.

“He’s gone,” Saaski said.

She had Tam’s full attention. “I saw a bird fly.”

She started to nod, then stopped in confusion. She’d had an idea the bird was the little man, but now she thought of it, that was nonsense. She hurried to look behind the bush—and came slowly back. “Don’t see him now.”

“I never saw
nobody.
Just that bird,” Tam said.

She stared at him, half-indignant. “Well, he was right there! Eatin’ your midday! Where’s your bread’n cheese if you don’t believe me?”

“Nay, I believe you,” Tam said gently. “I reckon you saw ’im for true. Bread and cheese both gone, right enough, afore I got more’n half! . . . Aye, I’ll lay it was funny to watch,” he added good-naturedly, as Saaski struggled with a grin. “I only wish
I’d
seen ’im. Or could’ve caught ’im!”

“Caught him?” The idea wiped the grin away. “What would you of done to ’im?”

“Eh, nobbut looked him over. He’d’ve taken no harm from me, I don’t grudge a bit of bread.” He eyed Saaski speculatively. “I’ll tell y’ something. Could’ve been one of
Them Ones.
”

Them Ones. “Y’mean—Moorfolk?” Heart thudding, she searched his face, feeling torn between excitement and alarm. “You’re makin’ up tales now, just to plague me.”

“I’m not! Other folks have spied such creeturs, I’ve heard ’em tell it.”

“Likely heard that rattlehead Mikkel goin’ on about his
pixie!” Saaski swallowed hard, trying to sort out her emotions. “If there’s Moorfolk about here, bet they’d never let
him
see ’em. Or me, either,” she added reluctantly.

“Why not?”

“Why should they? Never show theirselves a-tall, do they, less’n they want a favor done, or if a body’s done ’em a good turn already? That’s what I’ve always heard.”

“You did the little man a good turn, keeping your mouth shut!” Tam laughed, and after a moment she laughed, too. “Here, then,” he added curiously. “What’d he look like?”

She was beginning to believe Tam had truly seen nobody but the bird. “Looked freaky-odd,” she admitted. But the phrase made her frown. “Eh, I dunno.”

“Come on,” coaxed Tam. “He was little? How little?”

“No taller’n my shoulder—seemed so, anywise. Dark complected—like a gypsy. But his beard and bits of hair near as light as flax tow.”

“Brown eyes, then? Or blue?”

That flummoxed her. “Not blue.” She was sure of that. “Or rightly brown, either,” she added less certainly. “More . . . well . . . greeny-lavender.” She met a startled gaze from Tam and said hastily, “I dunno. They changed, like.”

Tam was silent, sitting still as a rock, looking at her with an expression she could not read. He seemed stunned, dead serious all at once, almost sad.
Thinks I’m gulling him,
she thought.
Taking him for a fool.

Anxiously she explained. “Seemed to
me
they changed, anywise. Likely they didn’t, though.”

After a moment Tam smiled. It seemed an effort, but the
odd expression began to fade. “I reckon they could’ve changed colors—or anything else—if ’twas a Folk creetur.”

“Eh, well, I didn’t mark his eyes special. Only the gypsy skin and fair hair. Or maybe ’twas gray! You reckon it
was
a gypsy? An old one. Runty. A gypsy’d swipe your cheese, right enough!”

“Gypsies haven’t come through Torskaal yet this year.”

“Might’ve come today. And they’re all thieving rascals, my da’ says.”

“Aye, maybe. But I never run across one I couldn’t
see.
”

Saaski made no comment.
She
had seen him. Seen his odd-colored eyes, the hole in his cap. Tam simply hadn’t been looking. Or maybe it was like the runes, which she could see and Old Bess could not. There was no explaining some things. No sense trying.

But it was hard to believe that she’d caught a glimpse of one of the Moorfolk. Everybody knew you had to be special, someway, to do that. And if she was, she couldn’t think how.

Abruptly she stood up, ending the subject. “I’m away to my tasks, now. I’m fearful late.”

She was already on her swift way down the slope as Tam called after her—in his normal, cheerful voice, “Come back tomorrow! And bring your pipes!”

Just one week later, the gypsies came to Torskaal, arriving at midmorning—an excitement of decorated, hooded wagons and long-maned horses, dark-eyed men and women, and their tangle-haired, light-fingered children, all jingling with bells and hung with tattered bright ribbons and offering everything from tin mending and copper work to reading the future in a body’s palm. For a few hours they were all over the village, bartering whatever they had for flour and honey and dried peas, hanks of wool and bladders of lard. Several went to Old Bess for herbs or simples, or with ailing little ones. The children, gypsy and villager, ran shrieking from one end of the street to the other, or taught one another dances and games. By midafternoon the wagons were leaving, winding up onto the moor beyond Old Bess’s cottage on the track to the town some leagues away.